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April 25th, As Usual
by
Every year, twice a year, as this box, that trunk or chest was opened and its contents revealed, Mis’ Merz would say “You keepin’ this, Miz’ Brewster?”
“That? Oh, dear yes!” Or: “Well—I don’t know. You can take that home with you if you want it. It might make over for Minnie. ”
Yet why, in the name of all that’s ridiculous, did she treasure the funeral wheat wreath in the wa
lnut frame? Nothing is morepasse than a last summer’s hat, yet the leghorn and pink-cambric-rose thing in the tin trunk was the one Mrs. Brewster had worn when a bride. Then the plaid kilted dress with the black velvet monkey jacket that Pinky had worn when she spoke her first piece at the age of seven—well, these were things that even the rapacious eye of Miz’ Merz (by-the-day) passed by unbrightened by covetousness.
The smell of soap and water, and cedar, and moth balls, and dust, and the ghost of a perfumery that Pinky used to use pervaded the hot attic. Mrs. Brewster, head and shoulders in a trunk, was trying not to listen and not to seem not to listen to Miz’ Merz’ recital of her husband’s relations’ latest flagrancy.
“’Families is nix,’ I says.’I got my own family to look out fuh,’ I says. Like that.’Well,’ s’s he, ‘w’en it comes tothat,’ s’s he, ‘I guess I got some—’“ Punctuated by thumps, spatterings, swashings and much heavy breathing, so that the sound of light footsteps along the second-floor hallway, a young clear voice calling, then the same footsteps, fleeter now, on the attic stairway, were quite unheard.
Pinky’s arm were around her mother’s neck and for one awful moment it looked as if both were to be decapitated by the trunk lid, so violent had been Mrs. Brewster’s start of surprise.
Incoherent little cries, and sentences unfinished.
“Pinky! Why—my baby! We didn’t get your telegram. Did you—”
“No; I didn’t. I just thought I—Don’t look so dazed, mummy—You’re all smudged too—what in the world!” Pinky straightened her hat and looked about the attic. “Why, mother! You’re—you’re house cleaning!” There was a stunned sort of look on her face. Pinky’s last visit home had been in June, all hammocks, and roses, and especially baked things, and motor trips into the country.
“Of course. This is September. But if I’d known you were coming—Come here to the window. Let mother see you. Is that the kind of hat they’re—why, its a winter one, isn’t it? Already! Dear me, I’ve just got used to the angle of my summer one. You must telephone father. ”
Miz’ Merz damply calicoed, rose from a corner and came forward, wiping a moist and parboiled hand on her skirt. “Ha’ do, Pinky? Ain’t forgot your old friends, have you?”
“It’s Mrs. Merz!” Pinky put her cool, sweet fingers into the other woman’s spongy clasp. “Why, hello, Mrs. Merz! Of course when there’s house cleaning—I’d forgotten all about house cleaning—that there was such a thing, I mean. ”
“It’s got to be done,” replied Miz’ Merz severely.
Pinky, suddenly looking like one of her own magazine covers (in tailor clothes), turned swiftly to her mother. “Nothing of the kind,” she said crisply. She looked about the hot, dusty, littered room. She included and then banished it all with one sweeping gesture. “Nothing of the kind. This is—this is an anachronism. ”
“Mebbe so,” retorted Miz’ Merz with equal crispness. “But it’s got to be cleaned just the same. Yessir; it’s got to be cleaned. ”
They smiled at each other then, the mother and daughter. They descended the winding attic stairs happily, talking very fast and interrupting each other.